Experimental characterization of collision avoidance in pedestrian dynamics

DANIEL PARISI; PABLO NEGRI; LUCIANA BRUNO

PHYSICAL REVIEW E

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Año: 2016 vol. 94 p. 22318 - 22326

In the present work, the avoidance behavior of pedestrians was characterized by controlled experiments. Several conflict situations were studied considering different flow rates and group sizes in crossing and head-on configurations. Pedestrians were recorded from above, and individual 2D trajectories of their displacement were recovered after image processing. Lateral swaying amplitude and step lengths were measured for free pedestrians, obtaining similar values to the ones reported in the literature. Minimum avoidance distances were computed in two-pedestrian experiments. In the case of one pedestrian dodging an arrested one, the avoidance distance did not depend on the relative orientation of the still pedestrian with respect to the direction of motion of the first. When both pedestrians were moving, the avoidance distance in a perpendicular encounter was longer than the one obtained during a head-on approach. It was found that the trajectories mean curvature was linearly anticorrelated with the mean speed. Furthermore, two common avoidance maneuvers, stopping and steering, were defined from the analysis of the acceleration and curvature in single trajectories. Interestingly, it was more probable to observe steering events than stopping ones; also, the probability of simultaneous steering and stopping occurrences was negligible. The results obtained in this work can be used to validate and calibrate pedestrian dynamics models.